So terrific that 3 of 4 readers rated it "soporific"

My Weekend: Crackdown

Gah! The whole weekend spent playing Crackdown! What has the world come to!?

Crackdown does a bunch of stuff phenomenally well. I’ve had to think, I’ve had to react quickly, and in some areas I’ve just had to sandbag my way through.

Climbing up the sides of buildings is great fun, and the puzzles involved – like getting to some of the 4-rated Agility Orbs high up on the skyscrapers in the corporate district – have been both frustrating and rewarding, all at once.

In some ways (possibly just Leg Augmentation ways), it’s reminiscent of Deus Ex to me. I’ve retyped that sentence (and a few others) about thirty times now trying to get the sentiment correct, but I can’t, so I’ll leave explaining that as an exercise for the reader!

The bottom line is… it’s just great fun to be able to scale tall buildings in multiple toehold-scrabbling bounds, destroy countless enemies (er, I can count to five, actually) at once with a well-placed rocket blast, and plow through traffic in the Agency truck cab.

For a sandbox-style game, there’s also a noticeably larger-than-average amount of persistence – enemies spawn and respawn, but cars and other damaged items tend to linger much longer than, say, GTA.

I am a bit worried that once I finish the missions, there won’t be any gangs left to destroy for more stats increases; guess I’ll just concentrate on getting to that point first… And again, I guess there’s always Co-Op multiplayer…

I got you in my friends list, so whenever I get the ‘net again I’ll be down for some co-op fun.

Right now I have everything at level 4 with a couple of achievements left before I finish up. I’ve been playing the game like crazy as well and there are a lot of little touches that make the game great.

1. It automatically detects Live presence. I have the Halo beta but w/o Live I can’t do a damn thing 🙁

2. The audio and video adjustments are sweet. High contrast + a little extra brightness boost. I also use the small speaker settings

3. The way all your settings load from the beginning without having to pick your storage device. A LOT of games can learn from the approach.

4. It "feels" severely polished. There are buggy moments, like the Saints Row "driver without a vehicle" glitch but it really boils down to all of the little things.

I’m hoping there is a lot of downloadable content because it looks like the sandbox is built, and anything should be able to be "dropped in" so to speak. Instead of waiting for Crackdown 2 they can introduce boats, planes, motorbikes and a couple of other islands if they wanted. I hope they give it as much attention as Bethesda gives Oblivion. It’d turn out to be a super sweet purchase then.

One thing I forgot to mention: vertigo. I’m severely afraid of heights so climbing to the top of the Agency tower or one of the really tall bridges kinda brings out my vertigo when I look down. Just Cause should, but the buildings are tiny and you’re given a parachute. Not knowing if you can safely land after a 1000 foot drop is where the fear comes into play.

I’m without cable and the internet at the house at the moment, so no Live for me :/. If I could only get a credit for the 3+ months I’ve been without the net (forgoing the month I had it briefly).

A good way I found people was to play the demo and join/host a couple of games. The full game should be able to bring up a list of co-op players and they can always block you if they don’t want you playing on their game. Hopefully you won’t get someone trying to get lame achievements you can get in single-player, like completing races or other crap. Since the only achievements that relate to co-op are defeating generals, that’s what people SHOULD concentrate on.

The timezone difference would be a little rough but I’ll definitely look for you and/or send you a message whenever I’m online more permanently. Hopefully it won’t be too long or we both may have moved on (relatively speaking, I think I’ll always play it now and then) by then.